The anti-gambling group Vancouver Not Vegas held a press conference Tuesday in, of all places, Strathcona, in a desanctified Anglican mission that is now a private residence.

It was the group’s last-ditch plea asking that the Edgewater Casino application for a new expanded casino attached to BC Place go back to Vancouver city council for a comprehensive public health review. We have a gambling problem, the group insists: We need a harm-reduction strategy to address it.

What we have for harm reduction now in this province is crap, and the most meagrely funded such program in the country.

Nonetheless, the casino application goes to the city’s development permit board Monday, and if approved, which is likely, the casino will grow to 72,000 sq. ft from its existing 36,697 sq. ft.

Why such a large expansion?

Good question. As of now, the new casino will be limited to the same number of slots and gaming tables it has in the existing casino across the street — 600 slots and 75 gambling tables.

But the proposed expansion is so large the Vancouver Not Vegas folks suspect that Paragon, owner of the Edgewater, might apply for more slots and gaming tables in the future. Certainly, there would be enough room in the new casino to accommodate them.

In making its pitch, the Vancouver Not Vegas group hinged its argument on the recent report on the state of gambling addiction in the province, Lower The Stakes, by Dr. Perry Kendall.

Kendall, the B.C. chief medical health officer, found that gambling addiction more than doubled between 2001 and 2007 — the latest data available to him due to a lack of government monitoring, which in itself is damning — and that the province has done little to stem it.

He also found that an outsized portion of gambling revenue generated by gambling for the provincial government comes from addicted and problem gamblers, and that B.C.’s casinos were pushing the most addictive forms of gambling, notably electronic gambling machines, or EGMs, such as slots.

So, while the number of gamblers has plateaued, and may have even decreased by now, Kendall found that gambling revenue per capita has exploded, to $552 today from $323 in 2002-03.

EGMs now account for almost 56 per cent of that revenue.

He also found that 26 per cent of the industry’s total revenue comes from the small, but growing, minority of 31,000 high-risk problem gamblers, though they are less than one per cent of the total number of gamblers. But there are also about 140,000 moderate-risk gamblers, and as Kendall points out, the government’s addiction treatment programs meets only a small fraction of their needs.

One would conclude, after connecting the dots — the promotion of the most addictive forms of gambling, the enormous revenues those forms generate, the outsized share of those revenues coming from high-risk and moderate-risk gamblers, the pitiful amounts of funds dedicated to treat addiction — that we have a government that is not interested in curbing gambling addiction and is actively doing all it can to promote it as a source of revenue. Count me as one thinking so.

And all those dots, so plainly laid out in the Kendall report, led to Tuesday’s press conference. The report, said VNV spokesperson Sandy Garossino, was “such an extraordinary game changer” that its new evidence of the extent of gambling addiction in the province compelled the group to ask the city to take a second look at the application.

At the very least, the group wants the city to review the zoning and reduce the casino floor space to an “appropriate” size; limit all casino operations in Vancouver to bar hours (as of now, all casinos in Metro Vancouver operate 24 hours a day); and limit the service of alcohol, especially around slots.

These are reasonable requests. After all, there is no reason why a discrepancy should exist between the way our government regulates bars and the way it regulates casinos — other than the fact, of course, that gambling in all its many forms brings in over $1 billion in revenue for the provincial government annually.

Which is why, as well intentioned as the Vancouver Not Vegas people are, odds are they haven’t a prayer.

The real gambling addict is the provincial government, and it’s not about to change its ways.

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